Introducing “Ignore”—a new comments feature to make your life troll-free

Learn how to quickly banish trolls from Ars comments like they never existed.

As promised some months ago, we have been working on a number of new features for our article commenting system aimed at improving the overall quality of comments on the site. While I believe that we have an extraordinary commenting community compared to elsewhere online, I know I am not alone in believing that the quality of comments has declined significantly in recent years.

Today we are rolling out a new feature simply called "Ignore." When you choose to ignore someone, you no longer see comments from that person on front page discussions. You enter into a blissful world where that person’s posts largely vanish, except when they are quoted by other users. We did not want to hide the posts of people responding to individuals on your ignore list, because you might lose out on insightful commentary from other readers. We will watch how this feature is received, however, and may reconsider this in the future.

To add someone to your ignore list, simply hover over their comment and click the little eye icon.

We've added an option at the top of the comments to temporarily reveal all ignored posts if you want to see what you're missing. We’ve also made it very easy to remove people from your ignore list. Just reveal the ignored posts and click the eye icon (sans slash) on a post from someone you want to add back. You should feel free to put someone who’s being annoying on your Ignore list, knowing that you can take them off of it the next time you see them in a different thread on a different day.

We have other changes in store for you, too. We're not yet ready to reveal those changes, but they will also help you customize your commenting experience as you see fit. We’ll be including new and improved ways of letting us know how you feel about your fellow commenters. In fact, we’ll be looking closely at who sits atop the ignore list, with an eye toward identifying the trolls. We are experienced enough to know that unpopularity is not synonymous with trolling, and this will only be one of many things taken into consideration when evaluating a user’s contributions.

So try it, and let us know what you think. As always, we’ll be listening to your feedback.

We're really hoping that when you see that irritating post that you'll resist hitting the quote button to dash off a response and will instead get the satisfaction of hitting the eyeball instead. When you respond to trolls you just make them happy, and spread their message to another post. When you ignore trolls they get frustrated that people aren't taking their bait and go away.

Edit: You're also "voting" in a sense on posts when you ignore them, since we will keep an eye on the ignore states for people.

Loving it so far. Noticed the change yesterday and already have a (rapidly growing) list.

The new Ars: Now Troll Free. Now only if the news on TV had an ignore button...or at least a filter list. You could ignore all political news, or sports news, or whatever you didn't care to hear about. I'm instantly reminded of the South Park Facebook episode where Stan gets beamed into Tron world and everyone he tries to talk to slides up their hand, saying, "Ignore". If only the real world were so simple...

EDIT: And just like every other feature of the "Desktop Site", it works beautifully via mobile web.

Looks nicely thought out, and the effort is appreciated. I frequently stop reading comments due to frustration induced by people purposefully missing the point, vehemently derailing a discussion, or outright trolling. It's doubly frustrating because I feel there are quite a few intelligent commenters on Ars, so I know it can be better. Thanks!

We're really hoping that when you see that irritating post that you'll resist hitting the quote button to dash off a response and will instead get the satisfaction of hitting the eyeball instead. When you respond to trolls you just make them happy, and spread their message to another post. When you ignore trolls they get frustrated that people aren't taking their bait and go away.

Truthfully thought, I think this is a scary feature and shows a bad quality of ARS, which is not good. Do people that need this feature have no self control?

This feature will only make more trolls in the end, then you will have quite a disparity between the "head in the sand" people and the true online consensus.

Furthermore ARS has increasingly conveyed the message they they feel the "quality of comments has declined" but it seems to me that every action they have taken to "fix" this "problem" has just pushed the community towards caring less about comment quality.

Quote:

"Edit: You're also "voting" in a sense on posts when you ignore them, since we will keep an eye on the ignore states for people."

How will this help anyone? People will eventually be forced just sign up under a new name.

Whew, thanks for the clarification. I thought the icon might have been a 'Strike User Blind' glyph and stayed away from it out of an abundance of caution. While I find trolls annoying, I believe it's generally thought of as uncool to arbitrarily strike someone blind over a poorly thought out statement.

I noticed this yesterday, but only for one post on an article. And this article has no posts with the icon. Is there some criteria for users to be "ignorable?" From the article it sounds like every post should have the option.

Is this still in development? Because I don't see the ignore icon in dark theme site. The eyeball icon is missing but clickable. Also, I noticed this ignore list is basically the foe list, by click on the icon, you just add the username to the foe list. Before you have to click on username then add them to foe list. Now, you just click on the eyeball in the post.

Edit: never mind. Just need to refresh browser couple times. By the way, this is add to foe list in one click. The url is the same for both.

A tad off topic, but since this is an article just about the front page commenting system... is there a reason the Story Author and Ars Staff tags aren't showing up anymore? Just a bug perhaps? I have a custom script / style that keyed off of those to identify and highlight staff posts, but they're not working now with those tags gone.

I think it's interesting on some sites to watch someone slowly being ignored by the community. At first their posts get a lot of responses and argument, then a little less, then even less, and then one day nothing.

Ignoring stuff is counterproductive. You can't have a discussion or argument about something if one party is sticking their fingers in their ears and yelling "la la la la". Spam and explicit trolls will be moderated, that leaves just people who are saying reasonable things you don't want to hear or may not agree with. That's exactly the kind of people you should listen to, so you can tell them how they are wrong, or maybe, possibly, change your opinion because they are actually making sense. Willful ignorance is not a good mindset to have.

I'm generally pretty good at ignoring any post I don't like by myself, and I don't like censoring the conversation in any way, but for those who can't stand reading troll posts, this is a great feature that doesn't change the way legit posters post like a thumbs up / thumbs down system does.

Oh yes ignore all dissenting voices! Huh, People that need this feature must have no self control.

Exactly.

Honestly I don't understand the need. 90% of "Trolling" is amounts to one person saying something another doesn't like. Another 5% are people trying to be funny but failing. I don't need a forum tool to artificially protect myself from this or from the tiny percentage of posts that are actually trolling

If forum features are being added I'd rather have a tool that helps identify great posts from average ones. A "like" feature or fatwallet like +/- contributes a lot more information than this ignore feature.

Might be educational for those ignored to receive a number count of users who opt to ignore them. Hopefully that would lead poorly received commenters to try to improve their self discipline. And perhaps to avoid the feature from being used as a means to create little fiefdoms of protected thought and or to give people a chance to redeem themselves, the ignore feature could possibly use an automatic expiration such as 3 months.

Awesome! Now I can blast out a flood of troll comments so that everyone ignores me then I'll start posting exactly the kind thoughtful and informative posts they wanted to see in the first place, AND THEY'LL NEVER SEE THEM. HAhahahahahaha.

I don't see that option. It is there, but the icon is hidden for me. I'll try another browser I suppose.

Same here. It works in Chrome, but not in Firefox or Safari. You do, of course, have to be logged in for it to work at all. [Edit: now it's working in Safari, but still not in Firefox, even after a re-start of Firefox]

[Further edit: okay, after explicitly clearing the cache it's now working in Firefox.]

Ken Fisher / Ken is the founder & Editor-in-Chief of Ars Technica. A veteran of the IT industry and a scholar of antiquity, Ken studies the emergence of intellectual property regimes and their effects on culture and innovation.